


Unknowable, Silent, and Deafening

by captainpeggy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Dreams, Drunken Confessions, Insomnia, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Nightmares, Pining, Relationship Advice, Self-Esteem Issues, Trauma, at least not canon contradictory as of ep 99, by proxy but i think it still counts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23940277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainpeggy/pseuds/captainpeggy
Summary: Beau took a swig of the wine and gestured haphazardly in their direction. “Fjord’s in love with you.”Caduceus laughed, a rich, deep, melodic sound that made every nerve in Fjord’s body light up with bliss and burn with pain. It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous, the way he felt, the way Caduceus’ presence could undo him like this—“You’re funny, Beau.”“’M’not joking,” she said. “Look at me. Am I lying?”“Beau,” Fjord tried to say, but she wasn’t listening to him.Interfering in the captain's love is life is nottechnicallyin the job description of a first mate. Nor is it in the job description of a good friend. But then again, Fjord had never accused Beauregard of following orders too closely.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Fjord & Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 46
Kudos: 293





	Unknowable, Silent, and Deafening

**Author's Note:**

> CW for canon-typical discussions of Beau's childhood, drinking as a coping mechanism, and some brief but kind of intense nightmares about canon events.
> 
> This one goes out to my friend Anna, who asked for some Brjeaus being, uh, hilariously bad wingmen. Sorry I made everything sad, but I guess I technically filled the prompt? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

“Y’know,” slurred Beauregard as she slammed the bottle back onto the table, “he can’t hear you thinking at him, y’know?”

The inn was busy, with several dozen patrons crammed into booths, shoulder-to-shoulder along the bar, and clustered around tables: that was what you got in small towns like this. Places with nothing to do at the end of a long week but drink and laugh and harass each other till somebody finally threw a punch, and then someone threw one back, and the roaring and cheering and jeering got loud enough that nobody knew who was winning or losing and nobody cared. Once in a while, Fjord could see the fun in it. He’d been in plenty of bars with men who’d thrown away all care for today or tomorrow. There was something particular about the way sailors ate, drank, took up space in taverns. Shoulders back, chins jutting out, eyes tired but bright, with rough voices all telling the same stories and rope-callused hands holding a tankard of the cheapest shit they’d had for sale. It’s what comes from being a soldier fighting the oldest battle of all, a battle nobody wants to label as such: the pride of man, and the pure, merciless neutrality of the sea.

Sailors drink to forget, and they do it well enough that they never have to think about _why._

“What?” asked Fjord, having lost his train of thought.

“He can’t hear you!” repeated Beau, waving her hands around to accentuate her point and very nearly knocking the wine bottle straight off their table. Fjord caught it before it had a chance to teeter back over, and took a swig. It wasn’t good alcohol, but that was the point.

He swallowed. “Who can’t hear me?”

Beau grabbed at the wine bottle. Fjord just lifted it above his head and out of her reach. “Who?”

“ _Fuck_ you, Fjord!”

“Are you further gone than I thought, or are you deliberately trying to confuse me?”

Beau slumped back into her seat, pouting. “S’not my fault. He’s smart, but he’s _so_ stupid. You’re stupid, but you’re _so_ smart. Fuckin’ ridiculous. There should be a law about this shit.”

“What are you _talking_ about?” asked Fjord, genuinely bemused. He took another sip of the wine.

“You think he can tell, you think he knows, but he doesn’t know. He sees it but he doesn’t know what it means, and you know what it means but you don’t see it, and he can’t read your mind, Fjord—”

“Are you talking about Caduceus?” asked Fjord, bewildered.

Beau snapped her fingers. “YES! That’s his name! That’s his name. You keep looking at him like, like… wait.”

“You’re drunk,” said Fjord, and raised the bottle to his mouth again, felt the cold glass against his lips, and downed another mouthful. And another. Like if he drank enough of the stuff, it might fill up the place where the bottom had suddenly dropped out of his stomach.

 _“‘There is a particular beauty in the quiet,’”_ said Beau suddenly, _“‘in the whispers of the night, unknowable, silent and deafening. There is a beauty in the rotting of a rose, in the thorn-pricked palms it leaves empty, raw, wanting. Give me no flowers, my dear, and no silken blouse, for your beauty resides in that which you are not, and that which you never seek to be.”_

She said it in the practiced rhythm of something recited many, many times before, alcohol-softened consonants sharpening, rolling off her tongue with with crisp precision. The words were clearly not new to her, but she spoke them with quiet, raw emotion, like the poetry was for her own benefit more than anyone else’s.

Fjord took another drink.

“’S’how you look at him,” Beau muttered. “Thorn-pricked palms left empty, and all that. He can’t tell.”

“Where did you find the time to read poetry?”

“Dad made me. Figured if I was a girl one way or another I better get good at it. Fuckin’ poetry. That one stuck, though. Gimme the booze.”

Fjord sighed, and handed back the wine. _Give me no flowers, my dear, and no silken blouse._ “I don’t—”

“Shut up,” grumbled Beau. “Not arguing with you right now. Agree w’ me or wait till tomorrow.”

Fjord glanced over to where Caduceus stood by the bar, towering over Caleb and even more over Jester where they sat perched on stools, apparently chatting nonchalantly. It was too loud to hear anything. Fjord stared at Caduceus, and pretended he was trying to read his lips.

The firbolg glanced over, and smiled, a gentle sort of smile, cautious and kind. Fjord returned the smile, but his lacked the ease and informality: it is more difficult than you might expect to smile when your lips are carefully concealing half-inch tusks.

“You think he can read your mind,” said Beau. “He only can if he thinks there’s anything to read. Can’t answer a question if he can’t ask it. Nobody in the whole world can read _minds,_ Fjord, fuck!”

“That’s definitely not true,” muttered Fjord, “but go on.”

Beau squinted at him, narrowing those unsettlingly turquoise eyes like she was trying and failing to bring his face into focus. “M’not feeling very appreciated by that tone of voice.”

Fjord sighed, and pushed down the impulse to look over his shoulder at Caduceus again. “You’re drunk.”

“You should try it,” laughed Beau. “You don’t have problems when you’re drunk. You can just say things— you can just—” Her eyes caught on something over his shoulder and Fjord watched them sharpen, the way they did when she’d spotted a target in combat. He watched her mouth open, and realized about a tenth of a second too late to stop her.

“Look, watch— CA— fuck, what is it— CADUCEUS!” She waved clumsily to punctuate the point as Caduceus looked up, hearing her shout even over the chaos of the bar. At least a dozen other patrons glanced her way as well, with looks that were varying degrees of dirty. “CADU—”

She was halfway through the word when Fjord tackled her, knocking her off her chair and sending the both of them sprawling on the wood floor: for a split second, Fjord was surprised he’d managed to catch her off guard, and then she slammed an elbow into his solar plexus and rolled easily out from under him. Fjord gagged and curled up into a ball, air forced from his lungs by the blow.

“Sorry,” said Beau, in the tone of someone who was not, in fact, sorry.

“I’m not working out with you anymore,” managed Fjord. “You don’t need it.”

Beau _giggled_ at that, actually giggled, and offered Fjord a hand up from the ground. The flooring stuck slightly to his skin and clothes as he got up. He decided not to think too hard about what he’d just been lying in.

A hand landed gently on his shoulder, and Fjord startled for a moment before he felt the gentle tingle of familiar healing magic wash over him. He looked up to see Caduceus smiling mildly at the two of them, eyes faintly glowing with divine energy as the ache subsided from Fjord’s internal organs. “Everyone all right over here?”

His _voice,_ Gods, his fucking voice. There was a lot about Caduceus that— well, there was a lot about Caduceus, just in general. But, well— Fjord heard that voice, and it made him feel…

Beau took a swig of the wine and gestured haphazardly in their direction. “Fjord’s in love with you.”

Caduceus laughed, a rich, deep, melodic sound that made every nerve in Fjord’s body light up with bliss and burn with pain. It was ridiculous. It was _ridiculous,_ the way he felt, the way Caduceus’ _presence_ could undo him like this—

“You’re funny, Beau.”

“’M’not joking,” she said. “Look at me. Am I lying?”

“Beau,” Fjord tried to say, but she wasn’t listening to him.

Caduceus took his hand off Fjord’s shoulder with the same gentle compassion with which he’d lain it on. He might as well have torn Fjord’s arm off for how much it hurt, for the fresh lurch in Fjord’s stomach that had nothing to do with getting whacked in the guts. His pale eyes met Beau’s.

“Say it again,” requested Caduceus simply in his low, rolling baritone, tone soft and curious, and there was nothing Fjord wanted more in that moment than to blast Beau straight out the tavern door, and there was nothing he wanted less.

“Fjord,” said Beau slowly, raising the bottle for emphasis, “is… in… love… with… you.”

“Oh,” said Caduceus. “Huh.”

There was a long, long pause.

“Well, let me know if you need any more healing.”

And then he turned around and ambled away.

It hurt more than it would have if he’d stormed off, if he’d been angry or apologetic or disappointed. He just walked off in the same slow, ordinary gait he’d used as long as Fjord had known him, back towards Caleb and Jester, seeming utterly unaffected by whatever truth he’d seen in Beau’s eyes.

“There you go,” said Beau, apparently satisfied. “Now he knows the question.”

Fjord said nothing.

“Drink,” said Beau, and passed him the bottle, and Fjord downed what was left without stopping to breathe.

* * *

The nightmares didn’t stop.

It had been months, now, but while the Wildmother’s embrace had softened the edges of his fears, even a goddess had her limits. Demonic visions or no, Fjord had still seen an awful lot more than one man ought to have. They’d _all_ seen more than they ought to. Nightmares, he was beginning to realize, were simply a part of the life of an adventurer: his were no longer filled with snakes, or saltwater, perhaps, but it was almost _worse_ to awaken with the choked, rattling last breath of a friend in your ears, to watch creatures deform and rot and reassemble into abominations, to see floors run with thick, red blood. He watched, again and again, as fire engulfed rooms, ships, forests. He felt himself thrown back by the shockwave of an explosion, again and again, felt cold metal cuffs ratcheted tight around his wrists, the bars of a cage pressing into his back, heard weakly murmured lyrics growing quieter and quieter until there was no breath behind the song at all. And through it all, slowly, he felt the aching chill of a blade inching closer and closer to his heart, deeper and deeper, pulling all the warmth from his blood until there was nothing but steel and darkness and pain.

He didn’t scream when he woke. Not anymore. He just breathed, slowly, hesitantly, waiting for another pulse of agony that never came.

Part of him wished that it would. The apprehension was worse, somehow, than the pain could ever be.

The waking up was the hardest part, trying to convince himself that it was over. Trying to ground himself in the darkness, dig his fingers deep into the fabric of reality and hold tight till he was sure it wouldn’t be ripped away. It was easier on the road, with the slow breaths of his friends rising and falling around him, with the faint, comforting glow of Caleb’s dome above his head. But they didn’t spend much time sleeping in the wild anymore, not since Caleb had begun to properly study teleportation and they’d roped Essek into acting as their personal chauffeur. There were times, alone in the pitch black of his room, when Fjord thought about picking through Caleb’s spellbooks with a candle in hand, scorching out page after page of notes and sigils. At least then, perhaps, he’d get a few nights’ better sleep on the road. But the urge never lasted till morning. Sunlight— metaphorical or otherwise— had a tendency to burn away selfishness, and knowing Caleb, the books were probably fireproof anyways.

It had been a quiet few days and an agonizing few nights since they’d returned to Xhorhas, exhausted and sore and desperately in need of some proper rest. Fjord wanted to sleep. He wanted _so badly_ to sleep, but there was a part of him that felt it was pointless, that knew he’d just wake up again, sweaty and shaking and alone, more tired than he’d been when he’d blown out the candle hours before. He tried, for a while. Rolled over and closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing, count sheep, imagine somewhere calm and beautiful. But eventually, every night, he would resign himself to consciousness and set about occupying himself until the morning came.

That night, he had awoken feeling like the walls were pressing in on him. The air was dense and stuffy, and he had to fight to inhale: on the edge of panic, he’d crawled out of bed and dragged himself out the door. The hallway was better, but not by much: the ceiling still felt too low, the floor too narrow. He closed his eyes and focused on his breath for a moment. In, out. In, out.

It was easy to get to the roof. Fjord ascended the spiral stairs, brushing his fingers along the tree roots twining impossibly through the stone. The sensation calmed him, just the slightest bit. Rough bark against his fingers, rising and falling. He thought about Caduceus, quietly planting this miracle with the same easy grace with which he made a pot of tea. He thought about Jester, carefully stringing up little jars of sunlight between the branches, casting a gentle glow in the endless night.

There was a small trapdoor up to the roof, that locked from the inside: Fjord reached up to unlatch it and found the bolt already slid open. Carefully, he pushed the door up and made his way into the cool night air.

A gust of wind swirled across the roof, sending fallen leaves spiraling. Fjord sighed with relief, the involuntary sound of a man with a weight lifted from his chest, and looked up at the stars. Tiny pinpricks of light shone down upon him, glittering in the indigo-black sky.

Finally, he looked over to the tree. Thick roots twisted to form divots and bumps that made excellent seats: he’d spent a lot of time settled on those roots, alone or with company, talking or thinking. Beauregard sat with her back up against the trunk, curled up like a child trying to hide from the world. She wasn’t wearing enough for a night like this: just a simple cotton tunic, sleeves cropped off at the shoulders that gave Fjord an excellent view of the gooseflesh on her forearms.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

Beau looked up, and Fjord pretended he’d been staring at the stars the whole time, so she wouldn’t have to explain why her eyes were red and her face tearstained.

“I couldn’t either,” he said quietly. He found a particularly bright star, considered its faintly bluish hue for a moment, and walked towards the tree.

Beau said nothing.

He settled down on the roots, far enough from her that she could ignore him, and looked back up at that bright star, shimmering in the brisk air. Two more stars formed a near-perfect line away from it, tracing an arrow northward… or at least, Fjord thought it was northward. He’d have to ask Caleb.

“Sorry,” muttered Beau.

Fjord blinked. “What was that?”

“I’m… sorry.”

“Oh,” said Fjord.

“I know I haven’t apologized for much the past couple weeks. I’m sorry for that too. Fuck.”

Fjord glanced over at her, saw her shoulders hunched, brow furrowed, knees pulled tight to her chest. It ached to see her like that. It was hard to be angry at someone who looked so genuinely broken.

He sighed. “Your father really fucked with you, didn’t he.”

Beau shifted her weight, and for a second he thought she might be about to look up at him, but she just wrapped her arms tighter around her legs. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess he did. I dunno. I’m still sorry. I was still an asshole.”

“You’re always an asshole,” said Fjord, and winced as soon as the words left his mouth. “I didn’t—”

“No,” said Beau. “No, it’s fine. You’re right. I am an asshole.”

“You don’t have to be _nice_ in order to be _good,_ Beau,” Fjord said quietly. “I’ve met people who were nice, and under that they were the cruelest, most sadistic bastards I’d ever met. I don’t— I don’t mean it as an insult.”

“Sure,” Beau replied roughly. “You guys can tell me you love me just like I am, or whatever. Say it doesn’t matter to you if I’m an asshole. But I still _am_ one _._ ”

“This isn’t about what any of us think of you, is it,” said Fjord.

Beau didn’t say anything, and for a moment Fjord thought she might not have heard him. He was opening his mouth to repeat himself when she finally shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter what it’s about. Facts are facts. And look— now I’m making all this crap about me, and it’s not. I’m sorry about the other night. That’s all. I was drunk off my ass and I said some stupid shit and I’m sorry.”

Fjord considered the apology for a minute, sat with it, turned it over in his head. He’d learned that Beau’s apologies often came quick and short, tossed out like she couldn’t care less one way or another… but as with most things, she listened far more closely to answers than she let on. She’d grumble a _sorry,_ and she meant pages worth of regrets and apologies and amends. So Fjord treated her simple sentence like it _was_ the soliloquy she couldn’t form, and he let it hang in the air for a moment. He considered the sound of Beau’s voice ringing out merrily across the tavern, the grimy floor where she’d left him gasping like a fish out of water, Caduceus’ gaze and hands and then… absence, and that made his chest ache with something that had nothing to do with the strike.

“It’s fine, Beau,” he said finally, and he meant it. “It was just a joke.”

“Yeah,” she said, and forced a chuckle, looked up with a lopsided smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And I mean, if you want to hit me again for it, go ahead. I won’t punch back this time.”

“I’m surprised I managed to get you at all,” Fjord noted. “Alcohol slows you down. I’ll remember that.”

Beau shrugged. “I’ll get drunk, and Caleb can cast Haste on you, and maybe it’ll be _close_ to a fair fight, yeah?”

“You ever think you fight to distract yourself from the problems you can’t punch?”

Beau laughed again, bitter, but not forced. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“Someone clever told me once that you can’t know an answer if you don’t know the question.”

“She sounds pretentious,” Beau said.

Fjord smiled. “Hey, that’s my first mate you’re talking about.”

“You going to have me keelhauled?”

“Don’t even joke. I’m a ruthless captain. Terror of the high seas.”

Beau met his eyes. “I wasn’t joking. You know I wasn’t joking.”

There was a pause. Crickets chirped softly in the night outside.

Now it was Fjord’s turn to force a laugh. “We’re still talking about the keelhauling, right?”

“Sure,” said Beau, looking at him with the slightest tilt to her head, the way she looked at a puzzle she was inches from cracking or a riddle that was on the tip of her tongue. Beau was clever. It was part of what Fjord liked about her, the sharp eyes, the sharp wit, the mind she kept carefully hidden under a facade of swagger and swearing and sex.

He liked it slightly less when he was on the receiving end.

Beau shrugged and looked away. “I dunno. If you want to have a crisis about it, whatever. Life’s short, Fjord. You could be dead tomorrow. We could all be dead tomorrow.”

“I’m not having a crisis,” said Fjord.

“What, is it because he’s a man of God and all that? Far as I know, the Wildmother _fucks—_ sorry, is that blasphemy?”

A warm breeze tousled Fjord’s hair, like a puff of laughter.

“It’s probably blasphemy. Whatever. Look, your god is having divine lesbian sex with the mother of civilization _as we speak_ , so that’s no reason to freak out. Is it that he’s a dude?” Beau’s face contorted into something almost resembling dread. “Fuck, do I have to counsel you through a sexuality crisis? I haven’t done this in years, and I can’t even kiss you to get out of the conversation!”

Fjord finally recovered enough from her earlier statement to string some words together. “You don’t have to counsel me through anything.”

Beau exhaled with barely concealed relief. “Right, you actually _were_ a sailor. Ha! Forgot about that.”

“It’s not like— well, I guess it is like that,” muttered Fjord. “Not the way you’re thinking, though.”

Beau chortled. “I’m trying _not_ to think about it, actually.”

“Whatever,” Fjord grumbled. “It doesn’t matter.”

“So what _is_ it, then? Is it that he’s a virgin? I mean, I guess I get being a _little_ skeeved out, but come on, it’s not worth getting this freaked out over—”

“This is the worst apology I’ve ever received,” groaned Fjord.

“I’m making up for my transgressions with free relationship advice,” said Beau, “in private, this time.”

“This relationship advice was not ordered,” said Fjord.

“Come on, man, what _is_ it? Your whole I’m-not-worthy-of-love schtick is getting old. You’re gonna turn into Caleb. Fuck, you’re gonna turn into _me._ ”

Fjord snorted. “There’s no good way for me to respond to that sentence.”

Beau’s voice softened. “He’s fucked-up too, you know.”

There it was.

Fjord inhaled, long and slow, and exhaled. His breath hung in the air, tiny droplets freezing in the cold Xhorhassian night. He breathed again: in, out. Again. It felt oddly like time had slowed down around him, as if the air filling his lungs had grown thick like water.

“That struck a nerve,” muttered Beau.

Fjord glanced over at her. “Don’t pretend you weren’t expecting it to.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I’m an asshole.”

“No,” said Fjord, “you’re just honest. And you’re right, about me, and the— the _crisis,_ or whatever you want to call it— I am much, much too broken for him.”

“Aw, fuck off,” Beau said mildly. “Pull your head out of your ass. Quit idealizing the guy. He’s just as broken as you. And even if he wasn’t, what, we’re filling out psychological compatibility questionnaires before hookups now? You and me are only allowed to sleep with people as screwed up as we are? Should I have told Reani _oh sorry, yes, I_ _’d absolutely love to go down on you but you’re far too well-adjusted for that to be ethical?_ ”

“Point,” muttered Fjord.

“Damn right it’s a fucking point,” agreed Beau. “Cobalt Soul debate champion, three years running.”

Fjord’s mouth twisted. “Your kidnapping fist-fighting boarding school had a debate club?”

“Yeah, and I was champion, three years running. You think they make just _anyone_ an Expositor?”

“I really can’t tell if you’re telling the truth.”

Beau shrugged. “Well, they also taught me how to be a great liar, so either way I guess the Soul gets the credit.”

Fjord let out something that might almost have been a laugh, a gentle, quiet sound that drifted away on the breeze. “You should go to bed, Beau.”

“ _You_ should go to bed. We’re doing interval training tomorrow. Bright and early!” She stopped. “There’s no sun. Dark and early, then.”

“I said I wasn’t working out with you anymore,” grumbled Fjord.

“Good workout buddies hold each other accountable,” she said. “We can’t all get ripped overnight as a divine gift, or whatever.”

“Oh, Wildmother,” said Fjord airily, waving his hands around, “come to me… be… up in here… please grant my first mate massive biceps… long live your holiness, amen.”

For the very briefest of moments, Beau waited in anticipation before glaring at him and rolling her eyes. Fjord chortled. “Got you.”

“Go to bed,” she said with a twinkle of mirth in her eye, and Fjord patted her affectionately on the back, stood up, and began to make his way slowly back downstairs.

* * *

The weeks went on, and things were… different.

It wasn’t that the feeling of companionship was _gone._ The gentle warmth that seemed to emanate from Caduceus sank into Fjord’s bones as easily as ever, but there was something heavy layered into it now— the ache of something unsaid, or at least unaddressed. _It was a joke,_ Fjord had shrugged when Jester started needling him about Beau’s comment at the tavern, _just Beau being Beau,_ and over Jester’s shoulder Caduceus’s eyes had found his, and Fjord had forced a laugh and looked away, and studiously avoided Caduceus for the rest of the day.

Or he’d tried, at least. But a highway skirmish turned into something much darker, and while he was doubled over in a cloud of sickening necrotic energy, an abomination sunk its claws wrist-deep into his guts and tore out a chunk of his liver, and Fjord _tried—_ tried to knit the flesh back together himself while Beau smashed the fucker’s misshapen skull in. But he still wasn’t much of a healer, and Caduceus was there before he could try again, magenta eyes burning with divine light and barely contained— _fury?_ — as he ran his hands over the gash. Fjord felt his intestines reassembling themselves, but it didn’t do much for the nausea.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, staring down at the place where the creature had torn through his armor.

“Rest a minute,” ordered Caduceus. “Get your breath back.”

On the other side of the road, Beau had crushed the last scraps of life out of the abomination, and had moved on to stomping on its dead ribcage to get out her residual anger.

“It’s fine,” Fjord coughed, rolling over to climb to his feet and suppressing the urge to gag as he stumbled away from Caduceus, towards the rest of the party. He didn’t look back, and told himself he was imagining the feeling of Caduceus’s eyes on the back of his neck. “Everyone okay?”

Jester flashed him a wide grin and two thumbs up. “Yes, we’re okay! Yasha got a pretty bad whack to the head, but she’ll be fine, I think. Are _you_ okay?”

“Yeah,” said Fjord, and swallowed hard against the taste of bile. “It was just a scratch. No worries.”

Beau swung her staff back over her shoulder and looked at Fjord dubiously over crossed arms. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Fjord looked away anyways.

He was doing a lot of that recently.

* * *

It went on like that for days, the thread of things-not-quite-spoken drawn tight around Fjord’s chest, his eyes cast down to avoid Caduceus’s gaze. He volunteered to take point on every excursion, and curled up and feigned sleep as soon as they made camp for the night, and he stuck close to Jester in fights— because he’d rather get healed in a puff of pink glitter than with the raw, aching compassion that flowed down Caduceus’s fingers. And it worked, for a while. Fjord was nothing if not a master of hiding from his problems.

“Fuck,” Beau had said once, when she finally managed to corner him, “I know it’s my fault, but seeing you dodge him like this is physically painful. You gotta get over yourself.”

“You first,” muttered Fjord.

Her voice softened, just a little. “I _am_ sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Fjord said, and he meant it. “You were joking.”

Beau sighed. “Yeah, sure. I just— man, it fucking sucks to see you like this.”

“You didn’t do it,” said Fjord, and he wasn’t entirely sure what he meant— _you didn_ _’t tell him anything? You didn’t make me such a coward? You didn’t give me an inferiority complex the size of Tal’Dorei? You didn’t make me fall in love?_

That night, he drifted into unconsciousness easily. The usual fear didn’t rear its head, and Fjord was grateful for that small mercy— dark as his nightmares might be in the end, dread never made them any easier. But this time, when he opened his eyes, it was not to scenes of death and desolation.

He stood barefoot in a cloud of mist, soft grass beneath his feet. The fog hung low to the ground, curling in wisps off the surface of what looked like a glassy lake a few dozen yards from where he stood. The sky was entirely grey, and no sun or moon was apparent, although the whole scene was lit with a gentle glow. Fjord’s vision blurred around the edges as he stepped lightly towards the shore.

Someone was seated cross-legged on the shoreline, silhouette difficult to make out through the mist— but as Fjord drew closer, he recognized the pale hair and lanky frame. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised.

“What is this place?” asked Fjord.

“It’s a dream,” said Caduceus mildly. “You’ve been avoiding me, and I think we should probably talk about that.”

Fjord squinted at him. “I’m dreaming? That raises more questions than it answers.”

“Sit down,” suggested Caduceus, and patted the mossy ground beside him. Fjord sat, brushing the dirt from his palms.

Caduceus sighed. “I should probably tell you, we’re both gonna remember this when you wake up.”

“Part of me wishes you hadn’t said that,” said Fjord before he could stop himself.

“I think you’ve had enough people in your head lying to you. I don’t want to be another one.”

Fjord drummed his fingers restlessly on his thighs. “So this is magic, then?”

“Yeah,” said Caduceus. “You can leave, if you want. I’m not gonna keep you here. But you keep avoiding me, so I figured it was worth asking why.”

Fjord didn’t really have much to say to that. _I haven_ _’t been avoiding you?_ That wasn’t true, and it was Caduceus. He couldn’t lie to the man. Couldn’t, and wouldn’t.

So he said nothing, and stared at the backs of his hands, studying the creases and scars in the skin.

“Fjord.”

Fjord closed his eyes.

“Do you want to wake up? I’m not—”

“You can’t keep doing this,” said Fjord, cutting him off. “You can’t keep— you can’t keep caring like this. You can’t go on treating me like I’m valuable, being so selfless about me. You can’t.”

“Oh,” said Caduceus. “Oh,” and this time Fjord could hear something that sounded almost like a smirk in his voice— a mischievous little smile, the sort of little grin that had taken him months to show to the Nein. “You think I’m being selfless.”

“You are— look at yourself, look at what you’ve done for me, look at what you do for me.” The words wrenched themselves from Fjord’s throat.

“No,” said Caduceus. “That’s not selfless.”

“I—”

“No,” repeated Caduceus, and he reached over to take Fjord’s chin in his hand, and turned his head to face him. Fjord let him, met his gentle gaze, and fought the urge to look away.

“Fjord,” Caduceus rumbled, “I am a very selfish man.”

And slowly, so slowly that Fjord thought he might asphyxiate in the drawn-out space between breaths, Caduceus leaned in, inch by inch, and kissed him.

And if Fjord had thought he was going to die before, if he’d thought going another moment with space between the two of them would stop his heart entirely, that was nothing compared to this.

Caduceus pulled back, just the slightest fraction, and whispered in a voice Fjord felt more than heard, tiny puffs of air on his lips: “See? Selfish.”

Fjord’s gaze flickered from Caduceus’s heavy-lidded eyes to the gentle curve of his mouth, a quiet, self-assured smile.

“Fuck,” said Fjord roughly, and he brought both hands to Caduceus’s jaw and pulled him into another kiss, harder, messier, more impatient. His tusks caught on Caduceus’s lips, and he would have panicked, would have apologized if it hadn’t been for the low rumbling chuckle that Caduceus gave in response, a sound that Fjord felt resonate deep in his chest. It was a sound that filled Fjord with something indescribable, some mixture of compassion, joy, and raw unbridled want that added up to far more than the sum of its parts, and with that feeling glowing in his bones there was simply no room for shame.

Caduceus chuckled again, and shifted one hand down to just above Fjord’s hipbone, palm resting lightly on his waist. He leaned his forehead in until it touched Fjord’s, and said quietly— almost conversationally— “I think I’ve wanted to do that for a while.”

“ _You_ _’ve_ wanted?” whispered Fjord in a voice he knew sounded utterly broken.

“Seems like I’m not the only one,” agreed Caduceus. He slid his other hand up Fjord’s thigh, fingers light on the fabric, and smiled at Fjord’s sharp intake of breath.

“Are we going to have to talk about this?” managed Fjord.

“I don’t really know,” said Caduceus matter-of-factly. “I don’t see how it changes anything.”

“It changes _everything_ —”

Caduceus shrugged. “Does it, though?”

Fjord didn’t really have an answer for that. “You didn’t have to use a spell slot to get into my dreams, you know.”

“Sure,” murmured Caduceus. “But I had to use a spell slot to remember it.”

“You could have just come to my room.”

Caduceus laughed softly. “I was going to. But you were asleep, and I know— I know that’s hard to come by, for you— I didn’t want to wake you up.”

Fjord shook his head, and muttered— more to himself than Caduceus— “ _Selfish?_ ”

Caduceus smiled and said nothing.

“Next time,” said Fjord shakily, reaching up to run a thumb over Caduceus’ cheekbone, marveling at the soft dusting of fuzz over stone-gray skin, “you can wake me up.”

* * *

_I think, in a thousand lifetimes,_

_I would not have chosen you._

_You are not broken. You are breaking._

_You are a thousand shattering pieces, crumbling in the present tense, dusting the palms of your saviors with bitter grey ash._

_You are songs unsung and roads untraveled, a tapestry of regrets,_

_a mirror you cannot bring yourself to look in,_

_a narrative you had no hand in writing._

_I think, in a thousand lifetimes, I would not have chosen you._

_And yet._

_There is a particular beauty in the quiet, in the whispers of the night, unknowable, silent and deafening._

_There is a beauty in the rotting of a rose, in the thorn-pricked palms it leaves empty, raw, wanting._

_Give me no flowers, my dear, and no silken blouse, for your beauty resides in that which you are not, and that which you never seek to be._

**Author's Note:**

> I've been reading a ton of books recently, so it's hard to pick just one, BUT: today's thing rec is **The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards.** It's sarcastic and witty and fast-paced, genuinely original, and overall one of the best things I've read this year. If you like urban fantasy, or even if you don't, I 100% suggest you check it out! (CW for sexual assault & related trauma, though, so proceed with care.)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. Comments always make my day if you're able to leave them-- even just a keysmash means the world. ;) All the love, stay safe, and be kind.


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